Author: FTB1(SS)

USS Snook SS-279

 

When we talk about the legacy of the U.S. Submarine Force during the Second World War, we often gravitate toward the celebrated names—Tang, Wahoo, Barb. But woven just as tightly into the silent steel of America’s wartime submarine story is the USS Snook (SS-279), a Gato-class boat launched in 1942 that would go on to serve valiantly and vanish mysteriously in the closing months of the war. Her story begins with the hard-earned lessons of a young submarine fleet still feeling its way through the murky depths of undersea warfare.

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USS Pickerel SS-177

She slipped beneath the waves with purpose and silence — a steel hunter in a sea of shadows. The USS Pickerel (SS-177) was no ordinary predator. She was a Porpoise-class submarine, forged in peacetime but baptized by war. And in the spring of 1943, she became the first U.S. submarine lost in the Central Pacific — vanishing without a trace in the cold, contested waters off Japan’s northern coast.

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USS Tarantula (B-3) SS-12

In the dawn of the twentieth century, submarines were something between daring science fiction and mechanical gamble. For the United States Navy, the dream of underwater warfare was becoming real—though not without growing pains, near-disasters, and more than a few hard-earned lessons.

One of the Navy’s early forays into undersea warfare was the B-class submarine—three compact, steel-hulled pioneers that marked a turning point in submarine design. Among them was USS Tarantula (SS-12), a vessel whose name alone evoked a certain predatory elegance. She was laid down in Quincy, Massachusetts, and launched on March 30, 1907. The Navy would later simplify her name to B-3, but those who served aboard her knew exactly what she was: a trailblazer.

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